Fall Membership Drive Update: Monday

Okay, I admit it. My mom is from New England and I was not an innocent bystander during the World Series. But I love music way more than baseball; and my dadâ€™s from Seattle and I grew up here and, other than the 1978 Sonics Championship, I have been used to having kinda bad sports teams my whole life. So I dulled any hope of really REALLY caring about sports 30 years ago. And, truth be known, Iâ€™ve had a more important Seattle-based reason to want the Red Sox to sweep the series.

Hokey as it sounds, I wanted the Sox to take the Rockies to ensure the health and well being of the radio station Iâ€™ve listened to since 1991 — the best radio station Iâ€™ve ever heard.

There are two little-known secrets to a city having really strong non-profit public radio stations: ONE: have pretty mediocre sports teams and TWO: live somewhere that it rains for 9 months a year. And SEATTLE HAS IT ALL, BABY!

So imagine my chagrin when I heard that the World Series (which the whole country plus Japan cares about no matter where theyâ€™re from or how horrible their own sports teams are) was happening during the KEXP 2007 Fall Membership Drive. And on top of that, it was going to be SUNNY during that same weekend.

But wait thereâ€™s more! Another thing you have to know about Seattle is that it ALWAYS rains the last week of October â€“ ALWAYS. Halloween sucks when youâ€™re a kid in Seattle. You walk the streets with soggy pillowcases full of deteriorating candy bars and pixie sticks, wearing dripping wet ghost costumes that have turned transparent with the rain and stick to your fleece coat, and your tennis shoes squish with each sopping wet step. All the kids in the Northwest sneak back into their houses and quickly gobble down all the candy that slip out of soggy wrappers before their moms can check their loot bags for razor blades. Itâ€™s a rite of passage, man!

And so it was, the triple threat for non-profit public radio station KEXP last weekend, occurring as frequently as Haleyâ€™s Comet: a Halloween party with the Great Pumpkin in the pumpkin patch and walks through the corn mazes, the World Series, and a PERFECTLY BEAUTIFUL gotta get out in the sun Seattle weekend.

And there we were. Your KEXP friends. All hyper-ly coming together on Dexter and Denny, hoping to raise $75,000 while the rest of the city and the world were VERY busy with holidays, the Red Sox, the Rockies, Spiderman costumes, yard work, bicycling, rubbing cold noses together, and jumping in piles of leaves.

We brought together a bunch of witty and passionate DJs to remind you of why you love the station, of all the services and awesome music youâ€™d already made possible with listener support, and of the things we could do together as we move forward, if you were to pledge your support. But you know, everyone was really busy last weekend. And, soâ€¦.ahâ€¦we ended up kindaâ€™ behind our goal, which tends to make a little non-profit like KEXP shake in its rubber boots.

But, really, the triple threat is not insurmountable.

It just takes us all coming together, now that the WORLD SERIES/HALLOWEEN/NO WAY, ITâ€™S SUNNY HALEYâ€™s COMET weekend is over and weâ€™re all back in the office or heading back to class, pink-cheeked and glowing with the memory of that crisp and beautiful weekend. While weâ€™re thinking about the other things that we also love in our lives, we should remember that KEXP is also one of those things we love and is really the soundtrack to ALL of those things.

It’s time to resolve ourselves to get behind KEXP, precisely because it is as important and as memorable as great sports teams and sunny days in October and Haleyâ€™s Comet Halloweens. So please, settle back into your week and do what you werenâ€™t able to do over the weekend: go to KEXP.org and show your support for the music you love and the awesome community weâ€™ve build together.

Your friends here at Dexter and Denny in South Lake Union will thank you!